


Developments

by orphan_account



Category: Homestuck
Genre: F/M, no SBurb AU
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-07-04
Updated: 2013-07-04
Packaged: 2017-12-17 16:16:34
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,688
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/869495
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Their relationship was slow to start and devastatingly saccharine, but that was the way they liked it.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Developments

**Author's Note:**

> two thousand six hundred words of johnrose fluff

They met when they were twelve over a chat system. She had been overly verbose and excessively sarcastic, perhaps as an attempt to paint an image of herself as more mature than she actually was, and he was staunchly undeterred despite that act (or perhaps just too friendly for his own good.)

Nonetheless, they had become friends, and she had added him to her aptly-named Chumproll alongside her twin brother. John Egbert, ectoBiologist.

-

He had contacted her again later that week, and requested her help in his English class. He was hopelessly failing the class due to his distinct lack of literary experience (slightly paraphrased) and needed her to explain the nuances of Shakespeare. As these things go they had ended up discussing the quality and lack thereof of their schools, and had found that they both lived in Washington. 

That would explain why they had so many complaints to share. "The three curses of the public school system," she had described, "are the teachers, the curriculums, and the students." His response had been delayed, and it was a typo filled message that detailed exactly how ridiculous she was. 

She had smiled for the rest of the day, gothic social image be damned. 

-

Their conversations increased in both frequency and length, until her mother regularly had to shout "Beeeedtime, Rosie, it'sh _eleven pm_! It's a shool night, babygirl!"

(Her mother's speaking and writing abilities were inversely proportional to her blood alcohol content, but fortunately for both them and the Child Protective Services her doting manner of parentage was not effected thus.)

-

She took up any excuse to speak to him, whether it was homework, pop culture, or the most recent literary failures. Eventually he had informed her that she didn't need a reason to talk to him, to which her reply was a relieved scoff and a jab of a witty comeback ("It's reassuring to know that your time is best spent speaking to strangers over a mediocre chat program.")

She had thanked him later. She was a painfully lonely girl, and the only other people she regularly conversed with were her twin brother, being raised by her father in Texas, and a young botanist off the coast of Australia. She didn't have any friends at school and she didn't _want_ any, the people there caused your brain cells to commit ritual seppuku in large masses when conversed with, but it might have been nice to have someone to sit with at lunch rather than being alone at a very large table. (A break from the relentless bullying might have been nice too.)

-

They had many conversations over summer break of eighth grade, detailing their (John's) nervousness about high school and their (her) worries about the quality of education. They managed to reassure each other while simultaneously worsening their own fears.

-

Dave took note during one of their own conversations, and pointed out that much of what she said was something along the lines of "John said this" and "John did that," albeit much less elegantly phrased. (hey you sure talk about your bf a lot huh) He was easily enough reprimanded, but she could not deny the vivid blush that dusted her cheeks as though she had been violently assaulted by the rouge attendants of a beauty store.

(She also could not deny that the idea of him as a boyfriend was one that she found not exceedingly unpleasant, especially after the grainy scanned photo that depicted twinkling cerulean eyes, spanking new braces of the same shade, and a grin bright enough to blind the sun.)

-

She had come home late one weekend after a violin lesson to a flurry of messages that would even leave Dave with a single soul-laden and ironic tear of sheer awe of their length. All of them seem to have been John attempting to get in contact with her, with increasing urgency up until the last five minutes, when he seemed to have stopped trying. _Are you still there? I'm back from my lessons, what's going on?_

His response was nigh instantaneous, as though he was sitting there waiting for her reply. _i'm moving._

 _What?_ Okay, yeah, that was more than a little bit surprising to hear all of a sudden.

_i'm gonna assume that "what" was you being shocked instead of literally asking to repeat myself, 'cause i'm not doing that._

She smiled at his response. Her more verbose habits had rubbed off on him. _You assume correctly. Also, where are you moving? Are you leaving the state?_ She typed the last sentence in the same calm, quiet manner she always did, but she was very much terrified that if he was, their friendship would end for some reason. She saw them as friends, anyways. She hoped he did too.

Her thoughts were interrupted by the chime of his reply. _hehehe, worried much? but i'm just moving to another city, dad got a promotion offer but it's a town over or so. i'm gonna be going to a different high school now, though._

_I'm going to go ahead and make the assumption that I am no longer a "stranger on the internet" and ask which city you're in now. Be warned that you may find excessively eldritch chalk drawings on your driveway if you give me your address, however._

His response took a bit longer than usual, and she chose to assume that he had to go and Google what the word eldritch meant. _hardy har har, rose. i am laughing my pants off over here. do you see these one hundred percent real laughs that i'm making right now?_

_Don't say I didn't warn you._

_anyway i'm moving to hoquiam._

Oh. _That's where I live. For the record, I expect mass amounts of pranks to ensconce every house in the city once you're moved in._

_you overestimate me, my lady! also maybe we'll go to the same school. /OVERLY CASUAL SHRUG_

That... didn't sound so bad, actually. In fact, it might be tolerable. Even enjoyable, she dared. _The districting here is ridiculous. We just might._

The rest of their conversation had carried on in the same manner all of them had, but for some reason it was fraught with a tight, tense energy. They bid each other farewell around nine pm, but Rose had lay awake in bed (even with the sarcastic drape that decorated her already gothic room obscuring her vision and the darkness covering the rest) wondering if and how things would change if the two met in real life.

Her dreams were frought with faceless bullies and a certain brown haired boy that swept in to defend her. She was _such_ a romantic.

-

The rest of their summer had slipped by with conversations late into the night, a smattering of violin and piano lessons, and the purchase of webcams on both ends because knitting took too many hands to type properly. Her mother had dragged Rose out to buy school supplies, all of which were black and purple with as many skulls and tentacles as possible (save for a single notebook with a bright orange sun symbol on it that she liked very very much.) She had a reputation to maintain, after all.

-

In what felt like a few short days school was starting up again, and that found Rose lugging a painfully heavy backpack into the building and trying (failing) to drag a set of locker shelves in with her. She had already received her schedule, locker, and combination, and shoved the majority of her things neatly into her locker (378 on the second floor) before shuffling off to homeroom.

Twelve minutes and a head full of bullshit later, she found herself on her way to first period. Geometry. She _loathed_ mathematics, even though she was decent at them, she hated the lack of creativity and the reality of a wrong answer that were not held by writing.

Her mood was cut suddenly and pleasantly short when she recognized a boy standing a few feet away from the door of the classroom and staring at the sheet of paper in his hands (he was tall, the webcam and the photos had never shown that somehow) and he recognized her in the same moment.

Then she was actually _being hugged_ by the boy she'd never met in real life and she was hugging him right back until the late bell's shrill whistle rang down the hall and they realized that they had gathered a crowd and were about to be tardy to their first class ever.

To his credit, he had caught her wrist rather than her hand when he dragged her into the classroom before thinking that she might maybe not be in this class (she reassured him that she very much was, unfortunately.)

They spent the rest of class in the back of the room comparing schedules. They shared first period Geometry, period 2B Phys. Ed, fourth period lunch, and fifth period honours History.

Her mother noticed the smile on her face that had followed her all the way home. She was kind enough to merely take another small sip of her beer and comment "Nice day at school?" from the couch.

-

Rose should have known that her old schoolmates would have fucked this up for her. Within two weeks of her and John entering high school, rumours were flying that the witch girl had a boyfriend, that she was lying about who she actually was (really, how much can a freshman have to lie about?) etcetera etcetera.

He was thoroughly offended on her behalf, and multiple times she had to ask him to not waste his energy speaking to them, please, they carried on like this throughout all of middle school and weren't worth the effort.

(He never bothered standing up for himself when the other kids went at them, and she could make the assumption that he had at least minimal experience in the world of childhood bullies. Not all found his braces and lanky form as cute as she did.)

-

Five months into grade nine found the two as very good friends, and they still spoke regularly over Skype and Pesterchum (although group chats and memos with Dave and Jade became increasingly frequent as time passed.)

The time also found Rose increasingly aware that she had emotions towards her dear friend that were not merely platonic, and left her scared and worried about what would happen to their friendship if she were to tell him how she felt.

(He hadn't shown any interest in her, and it was a bit silly to think he would. She was merely an antisocial teenager with few friends and fewer strong points.)

-

He scrawled his address and phone number in the first page of her planner in March, telling her to "Come over whenever, we have cake and lots of room." Google maps revealed that it was a thirty minute walk, and she eventually and reluctantly asked her mother for a bicycle with a basket on it, please. Her response had been very enthusiastic, to say the least ("Aww Rosie do you got a frien' from school? 'Course baby lemme get a drink an' then we can go down to the store!)

(In reference to the lots of room comment, she later learned that he was living alone with his brother. His biological mother had his "father" when she was in her early twenties, and then John when she was pushing fifty. She had a heart attack when John was two, and so, her first son had been left to raise the second.)

-

Rose began writing a novel at the beginning of summer vacation between ninth and tenth grade. It's working title was _Complacency of the Learned_ , and at least a third of it had been written at John's house. She had a laptop, after all, and a few USB drives. Transporting the book around was easy enough, and his house was always warm and inviting and smelling of freshly-baked cakes.

He was her beta reader, in a way, and even though he knew her style was remarkably heavy handed and overly verbose, his job was to tell her when it was really too much because the audience shouldn't need a dictionary. The story itself, however, was "really great, wow, I didn't know you could write this well!"

-

She began wearing black lipstick in tenth grade. He never spoke against it, merely saying that it was gothy and looked really nice on her, actually. She chose to interpret that as a compliment, especially when the other students began taking note of her ebony-swathed lips.

They weren't nearly as nice about it.

-

He confessed on Valentines day (which fell on a Sunday,) as cheesy as that sounds, over Pesterchum because they both had lessons on that day. _so, uh, rose? i kinda really like you. a lot. it's okay if you don't feel the same, but-_

Oh. _I actually "kinda really like you" too. In fact, I've been putting off telling you so because I was afraid of messing up our friendship in some way._ She handled that remarkably well.

_wow. really? that sounds like something out of a bad romance novel, hehe._

_okay, wow, dad's calling me now so i have to go and probably fold laundry. i'll see you tomorrow, i guess?_

_Yes, you shall. Enjoy your chores, John._

-

They had gone on their first date the following Friday. Of course, it's qualification as a date was merely based on the feelings of the attendees, as they had in actuality done this many times before as "just friends." Nonetheless, they both biked to the library after school. John had shyly laced their hands as they walked through the door, and the librarian (who was quite familiar with them both) merely glanced at them and smiled. Rose could have sworn she heard her mutter "Finally," as well, but she couldn't be sure. And she didn't have time to dwell on it either, as John's hand was still warmly intertwined with hers and he was eagerly asking about what Napoleon’s deal was, anyway.

-

Their first kiss was in May. He had been at her house (her mother adored him,) laying on her bed and playing with her cat, Jaspers. She had been knitting absently at her computer chair, the soft clink of her needles colliding serving as white noise for the two's casual conversation.

She had read, somewhere a while back, that the woman making the first move in a relationship was an act of boldness and confidence. That had nothing to do with what followed, of course. She had flopped onto her bed quietly, rolling over to reach him and coming to a stop a few centimetres from his face.

"Woah. Hi, Rose! I'm teaching Jaspers a trick, he's gonna play dead like the best of 'em." He then pointed a finger gun at the cat, who promptly sat there and flicked his tail. "Nooo, Jas," John bemoaned, raising his hand again, "You have to-"

"John?" she asked quietly.

He looked towards her. "Yeah?"

"Stop worrying about Jaspers for a moment," she murmured, before softly pressing her lips to his. She saw his hand go still and his bright blue eyes widen for a moment before he responded, and they both had to snicker when her lip caught on his braces a few seconds later.

"So, uh," he began, once their quiet laughter had dimmed, "does that mean I'm your boyfriend now?"

She smiled at him, gently reaching up to wipe a smudge of lipstick off of his mouth. "No." His immediate response was a crestfallen expression, before she kissed his cheek. "I believe you have been for a long while and you just never knew it. Also, you have black kisses on your face."

He swiped his hand down his cheek, glaring at the smear of black that appeared on his palm. "Rose," he said, "look what you did!"

The only was she could respond was with another kiss and the comment that she intended to do it many more times in the future.

**Author's Note:**

> TWO THOUSAND SIX HUNDRED WOOOOOOORDS


End file.
